


Hunger

by thevalesofanduin



Series: The Monster You Can Not Kill [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Creature Jaskier | Dandelion, Gen, Kinda, M/M, Plot without explanation, Pre-Relationship, it's a weird fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:09:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27672497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thevalesofanduin/pseuds/thevalesofanduin
Summary: There are few forests that unnerve Geralt as much as the vast pine forest in the Kaer Morhen Valley.It isn't haunted, exactly, but there are creatures who don't react well to the magic from the forge.Then one year, Geralt meets a rather beastly fawn.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: The Monster You Can Not Kill [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941736
Comments: 12
Kudos: 126





	Hunger

**Author's Note:**

> Before you go into this, this story has a plot but it's unexplained and it never will be because, honestly, I can't.

There are few forests that unnerve Geralt as much as the vast pine forest in the Kaer Morhen Valley.

A feeling left over from when he was young, from _before._ A fear so strong that even the Trials could not knock it out of him completely. His memories of childhood are vague at the best of times, but when he closes his eyes he can always recall that one night.

He was eight, angry for reasons he doesn't remember and he’d ran from the keep into the forest with Vesemir’s angry voice calling him back going ignored. His little body fueled by anger he’d walked and walked and walked until Vesemir’s voice wasn’t even an echo in his memory anymore, until all he could see were trees and a particular kind of darkness that only an ancient forest can have.

The woods whispered to him that night, he knows they did. Eerie whispers, as soft and beckoning as they were terrifying and revolting. Flowing as if on gusts of wind, up and down and curling around the trees in a language not a single living soul speaks. Those whispers of something unnatural—something that might have been alive once, when the Continent was nothing but a beginning—found a home in Geralt’s ears for years to come.

The next morning, Geralt was found half hidden away in a hollow tree and his eyes held a glimmer so haunted it was as if he’d seen death itself.

It made even Vesemir’s voice just a tad softer than usual as he demanded to know: “What happened, boy?”

But Geralt didn't have an answer for him, just warily eyed the forest around him while stepping closer to Vesemir in a worryingly open display of fear.

Decades later, with the snow falling in thick blankets outside and seated in front of a fire with perhaps a tad too much White Gull in him, Geralt finally asks Vesemir: “What’s wrong with the valley?”

Vesemir gives him a sidewards glance, and Geralt feels like a boy again being scrutinized by those knowing eyes. “Still remember that night, huh?”

Geralt frowns, surprised Vesemir actually remembered. But the fact that he had never asked Geralt what he’d heard, what he’d seen that made him scream terror into the depths of the night, plagued by nightmares for _months_ after the whole debacle, should have been an indication.

Perhaps Vesemir didn’t ask, because he already knew.

“In all my years on the Path I’ve never experienced anything like it,” Geralt says.

"The magic from the forge, there are creatures who don't react well to it."

"Shouldn't they just die?” Geralt asks, even if deep down he knows the question is naïve.

He knows better.

"I'm sure they did," Vesemir says with a wry smile, and that's the end of the conversation.

The older Witcher can't offer any more information than he has and Geralt isn't sure that if he could, he would want to know.

\---

It’s the second night of his three-day trek through Kaer Morhen Valley up to the keep when he hears it.

A distant clack-clack-clack of hooves against the cold and hard forest floor. It almost echoes through the air. This time of the year, frost already gently touches the ground during the night dulling everything in the forest to a state that is close to hibernation. But not yet, not fully although Geralt wonders at the sound.

It doesn’t belong.

It’s not the hoot of an owl, the rustling of smaller rodents over crunchy Autumn leaves nor is it the steady trot of an elk, or even a deer. It’s softer than that, indicating an animal that’s bigger than a rodent but smaller than a deer but in his life Geralt’s never heard an animal that sounds quite so unsteady on its feet.

Like a drunkard leaving a tavern late at night, swaying to find his way home on unsteady feet and an even unsteadier, alcohol-dazed mind. Or, like a fawn, new to the world and learning how to use its new, long legs for the first time. But it’s no time for a fawn, this close to the beginning of Winter even if it sounds like one.

He lays out his silver sword and waits.

Closer and closer it comes, hooves trampling leaves and skittering over almost frozen ground in what seems to almost be an excited, albeit unsteady, pitter-patter. Like whatever it is, is curious to find out what’s now in the forest with it.

Between the trees, he can see the figure coming closer and closer until it stands just outside of the light of the small fire Geralt has started, but the Witcher doesn’t need the light of a flame to see.

It _is_ a fawn, and Geralt admits he is surprised.

No, not surprised.

Suspicious.

It’s got its eyes fixated on Geralt, watching, almost as if it is calculating its next move with an intelligence the animal shouldn’t have.

It looks at Geralt and it’s right ear twitches before it blinks once, slowly.

Against Geralt’s chest, his medallion thrills.

The creature lets out a pitiful whine, that echoes through the air as if its bouncing off the walls of a well, shrill and cutting and the hairs at the back of Geralt’s neck rise in unease.

“What?” he demands from the _thing_ and lays a warning hand on his sword’s hilt. “You come closer, you’re dead.”

As if it understands, the fawn draws half a step back. It lowers its head and lets out another whine, softer, almost pleading and more animal-like.

Geralt sighs and, in the hopes to appease the somewhat beastly fawn enough that it doesn’t attack him, grabs an apple from his pack and throws it to the creature.

It devours it in a flash, with teeth that are too long, too sharp and too many.

He could kill it, yes. But it hasn’t done any harm and this far out the only living things it’ll find are animals, other monsters and Witchers. Besides, he thinks back to his conversation with Vesemir many years ago and has to admit he feels pity for this animal. Alive once, probably, and seeing as it is a fawn only shortly so, and too weak to withstand the lingering magic of the forge. 

The forest doesn’t whisper to him that night, but he sleeps guarded by the fawn lingering just at the clearing’s edge.

Come morning, he is alone again.

\---

Vesemir and Lambert are at the keep when he arrives.

So of course Lambert convinces him—with ease—to get absolutely shit-faced and of course Vesemir makes them work their hangovers off on the northern wall that, _of fucking course,_ needs fixing.

He’s forgotten all about the fawn until Eskel arrives.

With a goat.

After that, it only takes two days for Geralt’s curiosity to get the best of him.

“Did you see a fawn on the trek up?” he asks one afternoon as they’re out in the courtyard, eyes on the goat—lil’ bleater, Melitele how _soft_ Eskel has gotten.

“A fawn?” Eskel repeats with a raised eyebrow. “This time of the year?”

“In the market for an animal companion as well?” Lambert asks, laughing at his own bad joke.

“You’re sure it was a fawn?” Eskel asks.

Geralt hesitates, because while it surely had been a fawn once it wasn’t anymore and he doesn’t quite have the words to describe what it actually _is_.

Lambert snorts at his hesitation, taunting: “Going senile, old man?” and reaches out to punch Geralt’s shoulder.

Geralt catches Lambert’s wrist and raises an eyebrow at the other. “Respect your elders,” he says and gives the other a rough push.

Lambert, of course, holds on to Geralt’s hand with a smirk and lets himself fall easily by the push, and both Witchers tumble to the ground, rolling and kicking and pulling punches like they’re fifteen years old again.

“Hey, hey!” Lambert shouts as they brawl, “watch out for those brittle old-man bones!”

Geralt shoves his face into the mud.

\---

“It likes dried meats,” Vesemir tells him one night. No introduction, no addition, just the one sentence before he stands up from his chair with his book and retires for the night.

Geralt blinks, is about to ask Vesemir’s retreating back what the fuck he’s talking about, when he _knows_.

_Did you see a fawn on the trek up?_

He huffs at the ridiculousness of it all and thinks that it seems that Eskel isn’t the only one who’s gone soft.

\---

He doesn’t bring dried meat the next year.

Because, unlike Vesmir and Eskel, Geralt isn’t soft.

It comes to him on the first night, its presence announced by the distant and unsteady clack-clack-clacking of its hooves that Geralt recognizes instantly.

When the fawn reaches Geralt’s small camp—brazenly walking so close that it stands within the firelight’s reach—the Witcher glances up from cleaning his silver sword. “I don’t have food for you,” he tells the fawn.

The whine that follows the statement is the same as last year, high and penetrating and shrill and it bounces against the trees, echoes through Geralt’s mind.

“Shut up,” he growls.

Because it’s _horrendous_ and it hurts his ears, making it feel as if they’re bleeding but the thing doesn’t listen to Geralt's command. It whines and screeches and this needs to stop, _now_ , before Geralt truly starts bleeding from his ears or Roach makes a run for it.

Silver still in his hand, he’s got the fawn pinned to the ground beneath the tip of his blade in a flash. “You would die for your food?”

Blessed silence hangs in the air, the creature’s whine stopped the moment the tip of Geralt’s silver sword touched it.

But it’s looking at Geralt with big, black eyes and it growls low, sounding more like a wolf than a fawn and looking all the more monstrous with its rows of too long, too sharp teeth and it’s like it’s trying to say _yes, yes I would!_

 _Fuck,_ Geralt thinks. How sentient is this being that it _understood_ the question?

He considers killing it for a moment, fingers itching against the hilt of his sword as he hesitates.

He wonders if Vesemir would be upset to learn of this creature's death and heaves a sigh.

“Fine,” he snarls at the creature, although his annoyance lies mostly with himself, “I’ll bring your damned dried meats next year. Just keep quiet.”

The creature jumps up and skips around Geralt in an unsteady but seemingly happy dance almost as if it’s saying thank you.

Geralt sighs heavily and drags a hand down his face.

_Soft_

\---

By the fifth year, the fawn is waiting for him at the edge of the forest that marks the beginning of the Kaer Morhen valley, hidden mostly in the shadows the pines cast now that the sun is starting to set behind snow-capped mountains.

He throws it a piece of dried meat in greeting and watches with what he can only call fondness as it’s swallowed whole.

He gets it now, why Eskel insists on traveling with that goat of his.

“I’m Geralt,” he says conversationally one night.

He supposes, after five years of having the not-a-fawn tag along with him on his trek through the valley the thing at least deserves to know his name. He doubts it means anything to the creature, though smart it may be it’s still _only_ a creature.

It makes him feel better, though.

Even more so when the creature bumps its head against Geralt’s leg in what the Witcher will assume is a silent thanks.

\---

There’s a ruckus in the entrance hall.

Geralt can hear it when he leaves his room and he dashes downstairs when he does.

It’s just the four of them here, there shouldn’t be a ruckus.

“Fuck,” he hears Lambert curse when he comes closer, which in itself isn’t unusual, but this sounds like a _worried_ curse. “Are humans supposed to be this thin?”

A human? Geralt frowns.

“He’s malnourished,” Eskel contributes.

“And he’s freezing. Get some blankets instead of just standing there,” he hears Vesemir order and then, softer but not any less demanding: “how did you get here, boy?”

A fair question if a human has _somehow_ ended up at their doorstep, Geralt thinks just as he rounds the corner and into the entrance hall.

His eyes immediately fall onto the hunched-over frame of what looks to be a young man, Vesemir at his side with a deep frown.

The man looks exhausted, pale and ready to faint which is to be expected from a human having made his way up the Trail to Kaer Morhen. But what makes Geralt pause are the sunken cheeks, the way the man's clothes hang around his frame and yes, he looks malnourished but that can't be from just the trek up.

"Who's that?" Geralt asks as he walks a bit closer and passes Eskel, who is on his way out of the entrance hall—most likely to get the blankets Vesemir asked for.

When he speaks, the man looks up with big, blue eyes that are so captivating they almost knock the breath out of Geralt. 

Eyes that catch his and sparkle in recognition.

“Geralt,” the man says in a voice that could be melodious but isn’t, cracking with disuse instead.

Geralt, meanwhile, stands frozen.

That's his name, he thinks.

It can't be he misheard, not with Eskel frowning and Lambert shouting and Vesemir's eyes snapping up at him as he demands: “You know him?”

 _No_ , Geralt should say because he surely has never seen this man before—he would remember those eyes if he had.

But he can't.

For there is something within him that tells him he _does_ know the man.

Before he can answer, though, the man faints.

\---

They put the man on a cot in the corner of the kitchen so they can keep an eye on him, while the four of them sit at the large wooden table in front of the kitchen hearth that they normally eat their meals at.

"I don't trust it." Lambert is the first to speak, his voice stern and certain and his arms crossed in front of his chest. "I'd say we send him on his way back out on the Trail."

Geralt glares at Lambert. "To his death, you mean."

"It's how he made it up here in the first place."

"Lambert," Geralt sighs.

"Fucking what, Geralt? It's the truth," Lambert glares back at Geralt. "Guy knows your name and you've got no clue who he is. I. don't. Trust. It."

"Lambert's right," Vesemir says, "the whole situation is suspicious. But I'm against throwing someone out to what is sure to be their death."

At Vesemir's words, Lambert goes from looking smug to looking like he's about to explode.

Before he can, though, Eskel carefully comments: "Suspicious or not, it's four Witchers against one human. I like to think we'll be fine."

Vesemir heaves a sigh before turning to Geralt and giving him a warning look. “If he stays, he’s your responsibility.”

Geralt thinks about the feeling deep within him, telling him he _knows_ the man, thinks about those blue eyes.

“Understood,” he nods and that’s that.

The man is staying.

Geralt wonders if, perhaps, instead of soft he’s gone _stupid_.

Lambert certainly seems to think so. "A goat, a fawn and now a human? You've all gone insane. Might as well winter with the fucking Cats next year!"

Geralt almost wishes that he would.

\---

The man wakes up when it’s just Geralt in the kitchen, and Geralt offers him some bread.

He looks like he can use it, after all, and he certainly _eats_ like he can use it.

"Who are you?" he asks, hoping that he manages to keep the suspicion out of his tone.

"Jaskier," the man says around a mouthful of bread and honey.

"Jaskier," Geralt repeats and then leans back against his chair, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "You know my name."

"Of course! You told me," Jaskier says and smiles proudly, lifting a hand to quickly stroke his right ear.

Seeing the gesture, Geralt’s mind flashes back to a fawn’s ear twitching in the darkness five years ago.

The fawn.

I'm Geralt.

 _Fuck_

Geralt is out of his seat in a flash, dragging Jaskier out of his own seat and slamming him against the table. “What are you?" Geralt demands with a growl, his face only a few centimeters away from Jaskier's.

"I mean no harm!” Jaskier—the _fawn,_ the _creature_ —cries.

Geralt scowls. “What. Are. You.”

“Hungry!” Jaskier exclaims and his previously blue eyes flash big and black and _fawn-like_ and in his mouth his teeth seem familiarly too long, too sharp and too many. “I’m just hungry!”

Against Geralt’s chest, his medallion thrills.

He looks at Jaskier, pinned against the table, reminded of that mutation of a fawn and thinks that the world truly is a peculiar place.

And so, despite himself, he smirks and asks: "How about an apple?"

The grin he receives in reply is absolutely monstrous, but he finds himself drawn in by it nonetheless.

Soft _and_ stupid, then.

**Author's Note:**

> [Come say hi on Tumblr](https://thevalesofanduin.tumblr.com/)


End file.
